Chapter XLIX: The Assault

In the twilight we pressed on, through bright green groves studded by brighter golden oranges; through the flame-coloured leaves of the wondrous _Bois-immortel_; through thickets of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove-shrub trees, till we found ourselves at the base of the hill of La Fleur d'Epée, the sides of which were in a moment covered by the assailants--soldiers, seamen, and marines--scrambling up, under a tremendous fire of grape and musketry, round-shot, shell, and hand-grenades. The whole fortress seemed to be covered by flame, so incessant was the firing that flashed through every loophole and embrasure--over the stone parapets, and through the wooden palisades. Numbers of shells burst as they rose, revolving in mid-air, and their falling fragments killed and wounded several of our men; while, as they exploded elsewhere, pillars of black smoke and earth covered all the slope of the hill.

Led by the captain of the _Boyne_, the active seamen, with their pikes and cutlasses, were first at the outer palisade. Old Cranky, who was stuck all over pistols, like Paul Jones in the play, came next; and his solitary eye glared round him with grim satisfaction as he perceived his former antagonist, the earl, entering with him side by side, for he was too brave to bear a grudge at any man.

The French advanced work was soon taken--their inlying picket, or mainguard were all shot down or bayoneted; and many of our sailors, with the activity of monkeys, sprang into the embrasures--through which the levelled cannon were belching shot and flame--and there fought hand to hand with the gunners and linesmen, who crowded together on the ramparts; while we, with the battalion of grenadier companies, dashed in the gates, and then a dreadful conflict with the bayonet ensued, for the blacks and malattoes who mingled with the French line fought like incarnate fiends. The storming became a series of duels, in which many perished on both sides, and some frightful wounds were given by point and edge and clubbed musket, before they yielded, and threw down their arms in disorder.

Every shot found a hundred echoes in the cliffs of Morne Mascot, which overhung us, and in the distance we heard the sound of musketry as the General, Sir Charles Grey, assailed and stormed the batteries of Fort Louis and the Isle of Hogs, which commanded the harbour of Point à Pitre.

In the _mêlée_ I have described we lost our senior captain, John Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart, a soldier worthy of the gallant race from which he sprang, and ever ready to lead in desperate work. His family having (as Glendonwyn phrased it) "come down the brae wi' the auld Stuarts," he was animated by all the pride and high courage of the palmiest days of Celtic chivalry; but a ball from the upper rampart pierced his breast; he fell, and the hand of his old friend Glendonwyn was the first to assist him.

"My dear Glenny, I am wounded--mortally wounded!" he exclaimed, and fainted.

"Carry him to the rear," cried the Earl of Kildonan, whose cheek was streaming with blood, having been laid open by a sabre; "he comes of a race that have seldom died on other bed than this."

He was borne out of the press, and conveyed on board the _Winchelsea_, but died of his wound soon after the capture of Guadaloupe.

Colonel du Plessis refused to surrender, and, after a severe single combat, was disarmed and made prisoner by Jack Haystone, the lieutenant of our company. Just as he was leaning breathlessly on the sword of the French commandant, a ball shivered the blade in his hand. Haystone fell flat on his face, and at that moment a French grenadier, despite the entreaties of Du Plessis, was about to bayonet him, when Jack exclaimed in French, which he spoke fluently,--

"Hold! I have a favour to ask."

"Say it," said the soldier, raising his threatening weapon.

"If you _will_ stab me, let it be in the breast, that I may die at once, and lest my body be found with a dishonourable wound."

"Rise, _mon capitaine_--I am one of the old Régiment de Turenne!" said the grenadier proudly and sullenly, as he flung down his musket.

The scene about the shattered gate as day dawned was revolting. The dead and wounded lay there in literal _heaps_, and among the former was my poor friend Jack Joyce, the marine, who had been shot through the lungs. In one place where a large shell had exploded I counted about twenty dead men all huddled together.

Elsewhere, I saw that many of the wounded retained the attitudes they had assumed when death-shots struck them. Here lay a man reclined against a bastion, with a handless arm upraised; there lay another whose head and breast had been torn to pieces by a shower of canister. Close by was an officer with his handkerchief stuffed into his breast, and drenched with the blood of a wound from which the last life-drops were oozing, as his eyelids drooped and his eyes glazed mournfully over. Across a heap of bodies, a mustachoed grenadier of the old 37th, or King Louis's, lay on his back; the left hand yet grasped the musket, and in his clenched teeth was the half-bitten cartridge, the black powder of which was mingled with the blood and foam that left his pallid lips together, matting about his black beard and mustachoes.

Our Scots Fusiliers suffered severely, and lost there many a poor lad who had first heard the drum beaten and the fife blown "for glory" at the village fair, or in the pastoral glen where his father's cottage stood; but now, all gashed and dead, they would hear that fife and drum no more! Amid all this horrible _débris_, I remember perceiving a French officer, standing a little apart from the prisoners, with his epaulettes in his hands. Lord Kildonan inquired the reason of this.

"To avoid the indignity of having them torn from my shoulders," he replied, haughtily.

"Torn!--by whom?"

"Plunderers. I have worn these epaulettes at Versailles--ay, in the same quadrille with Marie Antoinette. I have worn them in battle against the Austrians, and I would not have them desecrated."

"Then replace them, monsieur," said the earl; "it is not the custom of British soldiers to plunder either the living or the dead."

Mr. Williams, our minister, in his account of this affair, says: "Being the only chaplain present, I went up early in the evening, as soon as the action was over, to bury the dead. At the foot of the hill lay several of our seamen badly wounded. A little further on, under some tall trees, were several naval officers reposing after the fatigues of the morning; their men were not far from them. Further on a party of wounded prisoners were brought in by our people, and at the gates of the fort lay a heap of slain, who had died by the sword or the bayonet. Within it lay a multitude of miserable creatures expiring of their wounds, and many of our own people in the same situation. In the midst of this his Excellency [Sir Charles Grey] was writing his despatches, at a table on which lay an artilleryman sleeping, being overcome with fatigue, and the good general would not allow him to be disturbed."

After the slaughter and horrors we had witnessed, there was something quite refreshing in the humane sentiment, that prevented our gallant old leader from rousing the worn-out gunner, who had fallen asleep on a table brought forth from Du Plessis' quarters, for the use of the staff.

We had seventy-five killed and wounded in capturing this small fort. Of the French, including blacks and mulattoes, there were killed and taken two hundred and thirty-two.

Such was the storming of Fort Fleur d'Epée, in the island of Guadaloupe, by our losses at which I won my first lieutenantcy.